Producers of ethanol and biodiesel aren’t sure they can meet President Bush’s goal of 35 billion gallons of renewable or alternative fuels produced a year by 2017. Currently, just under a billion gallons a year of biodiesel and about six billion gallons of ethanol is produced. The American Agriculturalist web site says the debate came during an industry event last week in Houston:
A Bush administration official Friday defended the viability of the president’s goals, but the discussion at the Houston event underscores the magnitude of the challenge facing the U.S. as it struggles to feed its growing energy needs in an increasingly carbon-limited world.
“I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks more than half could be from ethanol and biodiesel,” Pearce Hammond, an analyst at Simmons & Co. International, says of the targets. He says total production of ethanol and biodiesel could reach 17.5 million gallons by 2017. Hammond says there could be other solutions to the conundrum, such as coal-to-liquids technology or the use of natural gas as a transportation fuel.
But Hammond, who emceed some of the sessions Friday, also warned that U.S. gasoline demand is forecast to grow by some 35 million gallons a day over the next decade.
“It just touches on how big the challenge is to penetrate and change the fueling habits,” he says.
Speaking with reporters after a luncheon address, Paul Dickerson, an Energy Department official, says the administration’s goal is realistic. He pointed to other fuels under development, as well as to leading-edge technologies being funded chiefly by private-venture capital.
“We’re more bullish on the output than some of the folks here,” says Dickerson, the chief operating officer for the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Conference attendees say the biggest obstacle will be enough feedstocks to make all this fuel possible.
I’m attending the 
EPIC executive director Tom Slunecka and Fagen president Ron Fagen both traveled to the small remote fishing and hunting community of 
When the 
Harrow says with the election of Bill Ritter as governor of the state last year, the coalition’s mission has been expanded beyond E85 and is now known as the Biofuels Coalition. 
As livestock producers continue to voice concerns about rising feed costs, proposed “transition assistance” for farmers to grow dedicated energy crops was introduced this week in legislation sponsored by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Kent Conrad (D-SD). 
Harkin, chairman of the Senate Ag Committee, said in a 
The North Central Ohio community of Marion is located in Marion County 50 miles north of Columbus. POET Biorefining Marion, a $130 million production facility, will annually produce 65 million gallons of ethanol and 178,000 tons of premium Dakota Gold Enhanced Nutrition Distillers Products™ from 21 million bushels of locally grown corn. 
This week I made a trip with Joe Jobe (left), CEO of the National Biodiesel Board to Jay Leno’s Garage. Jay’s on the New Holland tractor and next to him on the right is New Holland head of industry affairs, Gene Hemphill. We were there to tape a video for Jay’s website which should be published there sometime in the coming weeks.
The project, a state of the art dental center located in the city of Connersville, Indiana — The Christie Family Dentistry — featuring some of the most technologically advanced dental equipment, will now be the first in the state to be powered by solar energy with this newly installed 20-kilowatt solar roof. This 20-kilowatt system will be one of the largest photovoltaic projects in Indiana and will provide up to one-half of the facility’s power requirements. This will be the first solar installation in Indiana to utilize solar roof tiles instead of standard panels. 
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) is expected to introduce soon, possibly on Thursday, a bill that will keep Big Oil from cashing in on the tax credit intended to help biodiesel producers.